In Houston, a silent and sudden integration

How a 'whites only' junior college became one of the most diverse universities in the U.S.

Melissa Torres, for the Houston Chronicle

March 8, 2017Updated: March 8, 2017 11:03am

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STJC cheerleaders.

STJC cheerleaders.

Photo: Melissa Torres

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Archival image from the STJC yearbook.

Archival image from the STJC yearbook.

Photo: Melissa Torres

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The registrar's documents listed STJC students by
gender, marriage status, even job, but it made no mention of race or
country of origin in an attempt to avoid the conversation of integration.

The registrar's documents listed STJC students by gender, marriage status, even job, but it made no mention of race or country of origin in an attempt to avoid the conversation of integration.

Photo: Melissa Torres

In Houston, a silent and sudden integration

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In many cities in the United States in the 1960s, there was legal tension and sometimes physical violence associated with the integration of public life. Selma, Oxford, Topeka, Montgomery -- all were sites of unrest.

In Houston, however, there was silence. Public spaces integrated very quietly thanks to a mutually agreed upon blackout of press coverage, which kept any potential violent response to a minimum. Unfortunately, this silence allowed for segregation of schools to continue for too long. HISD dragged its feet after Brown v. Board of Education, leading to a school boycott of 9,000 black students in 1965.

Before it became the University of Houston-Downtown, South Texas Junior College (STJC) was the largest private junior college in Texas. It did not keep statistics on the race of its student body, but anyone in 1965 could crack open a Seahawk yearbook or a Talon student newspaper and see that it was for "whites only."

Photo: Melissa Torres

Thomas Melonçon was one of the first African-American students to
enroll at STJC in 1967.

Thomas Melonçon was one of the first African-American students to...

There were certainly a few students attending who would not today self-identify as white (the yearbooks do reveal a smattering of students with "Hispanic" last names), but there were absolutely no African-American students. At the time, STJC was owned by the YMCA and operated, along with the South Texas College of Law, out of the YMCA building downtown. (That YMCA was also for whites only.)

In the spring of 1967, the whole partnership seemed to fall apart, though the official reason was very murky. The College of Law built new facilities elsewhere downtown, STJC moved to more spacious accommodations at One Main Street and both separated from the YMCA. There were rumors that because the YMCA had just instituted a national policy of integration, the College of Law separated itself, and STJC was essentially set adrift by this split.

However, being freed from its affiliations with these two groups would shape STJC's future course. In the fall of 1967, without fanfare or acknowledgement, it integrated itself.

Racial statistics were kept the first time that semester by the registrar. It happened silently -- oral histories taken from the men who ran STJC at the time do not mention desegregation. Yet the evidence is clearly there in the photographs and the institutional record-keeping. There are 186 "Negro" students, and 53 "foreign" students -- a paltry 6 percent of total enrollment, but a sudden shift.

By the fall of 1968, though, the numbers jumped dramatically, with 405 African-American students and 273 "Latin" students, nearly 17 percent of the total enrollment. In The Talon, there was nothing written about integration, perhaps as a nod to the way the Houston press corps treated integration within the city.

Photo: Melissa Torres

Steve Thomas was the first African-American senior class president at STJC.

Steve Thomas was the first African-American senior class president...

Even amidst the silence, integration can be seen in the historical record: A mention, a photograph, the addition of two African-American students to the newspaper staff. It was not smooth nor easy. The registrar's report to the newspaper listed all the students by gender, marriage status, even job, but it made no mention of race or country of origin in an attempt to avoid the conversation. Ads appeared in The Talon for the Afro-American History Club and the Hispanic Student Association as students tried to carve out safe spaces for themselves. A feature news story was run in 1969 on Thomas Melonçon (who would go on to become an accomplished poet and playwright and professor at TSU), who was one of those first students to enroll in 1967, on a basketball scholarship.

When asked what extracurriculars he participated in, he replied, "I am in the Afro-American Club because it is the only club I can relate to."

By 1970, though, a slow revolution was happening. When minority enrollment was around 19 percent, the senior class elected its first African-American President, Steve Thomas. The articles in The Talon were now focused not just on the Rodeo Club and the homecoming court (typically dominated by white students), but on the large populations of immigrant and first-generation students now attending STJC, as well as on the issues of race relations in the United States.

It's interesting to note that while enrollment declined generally at STJC in the early 1970s, enrollment particularly of Asian-American students increased year-over-year steadily, and by 1974, constituted nearly 20 percent of the student body. This could be related to the Hart-Celler Act enacted in 1968, which allowed Asian immigration to the U.S. for the first time since 1921.

Minority enrollment jumped from 6 percent in fall 1967 to 39 percent by spring 1974, with a staggering 20 percent of students identifying as immigrants. When South Texas was purchased by the UH system in 1974, its newfound dedication to a diverse student population was well entrenched. The appointment of J. Don Boney as University of Houston-Downtown's Chancellor (the first African American appointed to the head of a university within the entire UH system) was a cementing of that trajectory toward diversity.

In the early 1990s, a presidential task force guaranteed diversity by mandating that the demographics of the student body must reflect the demographics of Houston itself. Today, UHD is the most diverse university in the entire southwestern United States, and it prides itself on its designation as a minority-serving institution and a federally recognized Hispanic-serving institution.

Melissa Torres (@agoodlibrarian) is an archivist and librarian who has lived in Houston for 15 years. She is currently the University Archivist at the University of Houston-Downtown and maintains the archives' historical blog, Confluence.